"Physical agriculture's assets are the new focus in longer term investments as institutional investors explore opportunities in everything from raw land to grain elevators to food processing plants," said Peter Meyer, an agricultural products specialist at J.P. Morgan Chase where he is executive director....

That interest will be the focus of a "Global AgInvesting" conference, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in New York. Sessions are aimed at pension funds, endowments, private equity and hedge funds and corporate agricultural-related companies seeking to leverage the structural changes occurring in global agribusiness.

The conference comes after the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a June 17 report that even amid the global financial crisis and economic downturn in all sectors of the economy, agriculture was faring well due to relatively income-inelastic demand for food...

Political leaders in many countries are getting involved. Recently, Pakistan offered to sell or lease 404,700 hectares of farmland to foreign investors looking to secure food supplies to their countries. And Egypt is expanding its hold on farmland in Nile Basin countries in order to protect its water supply and boost supplies of staple crops.